Tag Archives: the Walt Disney Company

Olive Films has announced that it will release two Hollywood classics on DVD and Blu-ray next month.

Olive Films will release Jimmy Cagney’s 1943 film Johnny Come Lately and The Marx Brothers’ 1949 film Love Happy on May 6th. Cagney stars as ex-newspaperman Tom Richards opposite Grace George’s Vinnie McLeod in Johnny Come Lately. After McLeod–who is himself the editor of a failing newspaper–saves Richards from serving a jail sentence for vagrancy, the pair teams up to expose political corruption in a small town. Richards and McLeod have to face their evil rival, corrupt newspaper owner Big Boss Dougherty (Edward McNamara) as they attempt to uncover all of the corruption going on in the town. The role was the first for Cagney since his Academy Award ® winning role the previous year in the beloved film Yankee Doodle Dandy. Cagney won the Oscar for Best Actor thanks to the movie.

Marjorie Main (Ma and P Kettle), Marjorie Lord (Make Room For Daddy), and Hattie McDaniel (Gone With The Wind) serve as supporting cast in Johnny Come Lately. William K. Howard directed and composer Leigh Harline (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio) handled the movie’s score. Harline would go on to receive an Oscar ® nomination for this movie’s score. Johnny Come Lately will be available on DVD and Blu-ray May6th for SRP of $24.95(DVD) and $29.95 (Blu-ray).

Also on May 6th, Olive Films will release the Marx Brothers’ classic film Love Happy on DVD and Blu-ray. This movie was the last for the famed brothers. Harpo leads his brothers in this movie in which he plays a Robin Hood type of character. He is trying to help a group of struggling actors that are trying to open a new musical without any financial backing. When he accidentally takes some smuggled diamonds in a shoplifting heist, Harpo and his friends come face to face with Madame Egelichi (Ilona Massey). Unbeknownst to them, Madame Egelichi has tracked her smuggled diamonds back to the theater where the acting troupe is trying to put on its musical. She hatches a plan to be the sole financial backer for the theater and for the musical so that she can get her diamonds back. The result is plenty of laughs for audiences. Harpo’s brothers Groucho and Chico are along for the ride in Love Happy as are fellow co-stars Vera-Ellen, Raymond Burr, and Marilyn Monroe.

A new deal between ESPN and DISH has given DISH carriage rights to the fledgling SEC network when the multiplatform network launches this Summer.

DISH will begin carrying the SEC Network beginning August 14th, 2014. The announced deal is just one part of a much larger groundbreaking deal signed this week between DISH and The Walt Disney Company. It makes DISH the first nationwide television provider for the SEC Network. The multiplatform deal includes coverage of over one thousand live events in just its first year. That number includes no fewer than forty-five exclusive SEC football games, over one hundred men’s basketball games, sixty women’s basketball games, seventy-five baseball games, fifty softball games, and even more events throughout the SEC’s twenty-one different sports.

As with the deal giving DISH broadcast rights for the Longhorn Network, this deal will see the SEC Network added to DISH America’s Top120+ and higher packages nationwide. Those that add the SEC Network to their satellite package will also have access to the network’s digital platform. That will allow audiences access to SEC Network content at home and on the go via computers and mobile web.

Terms of the deal partner ESPN and the SEC through 2034. Dave Shull, DISH Executive VP and CCO, spoke on behalf of the network in an interview about the deal. “Few fan bases rival the passion and loyalty of the SEC, and DISH is proud to be the first nationwide television provider of the SEC Network,” he said. “We strive to give our customers and consumers what they want, and there’s no better place for the college sports fan than with DISH.”

Justin Connolly, ESPN Senior VP of College Networks, expanded on Shull’s comments explaining just how important the deal is to ESPN and DISH. “This agreement provides DISH customers nationwide with access to every SEC college football game this fall and an unparalleled fan experience of more SEC content than ever before,” he said.

SEC Commissioner Mike Slive also spoke with reporters after the groundbreaking deal was signed and sealed. He expressed to reporters the importance of the deal not only for the SEC, but also for fans of SEC athletics. “This is an important day for the SEC Network,” he said. “We are pleased to welcome DISH to the SEC family. More than five months ahead of the network launch, it’s exciting to have a national distributor and our first satellite provider onboard. Now SEC fans from across the country have another way to show their conference pride and sign up to get the SEC Network.”

When is a man not a man? A man is not a man only when he gives up. That is what those who have not yet seen Marvel’s new blockbuster Iron Man 3 need to remember when going into this movie. Many of those who have seen this movie have complained that the movie didn’t feature enough of Tony in his suit; that it was essentially more melodrama than movie. Here’s the thing. Just as start Robert Downey Junior noted in recent reviews, he can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again. He meant that in terms of playing Iron Man/Tony Stark again in a potential Iron Man 4 and/or Avengers 2. But the reality is that those comments apply within the context of Iron Man 3 itself, too. Fans have seen Tony Stark don his armor time and again in the first two movies in this franchise. And for the most part, his armor has done the same sort of feats. So seeing Tony lose everything, including his suits (albeit temporarily) and forced to rely on just his wits was actually a nice change of pace. It showed that while he may not have been a superhero for much of the movie, he was still a hero and no less a man. That’s because he didn’t give up. He didn’t even let anxiety attacks hold him down. These are messages that any viewer, comic book fan or not, should take away from this movie.

The messages contained within Iron Man 3 are just one positive aspect to this movie. While it’s hardly perfect, the fan boys and fan girls that have lambasted it for its surprise regarding The Mandarin and the Extremis story arc have gone into the movie with too much of a closed mind. They perhaps didn’t catch that Writer/Director Shane Black and his Co-Writer Drew Pearce did in fact poke fun at themselves indirectly concerning this matter. When the truth is revealed about The Mandarin, Rhodey asks Tony, “This is The Mandarin?!” Tony retorts with one of so many wisecracks that audiences have come to love from him. Those that are open minded enough will appreciate that this short moment is actually Pearce and Black’s way of beating the fan boys and fan girls to the punch in hopes that it will get them to laugh at the story changes with them. Though, in defense of the fan boys and fan girls, it is a bit of a slap in their faces to turn The Mandarin into the minor figure that Black and Pearce did. Maybe in any future installments, audiences will get The Mandarin that they deserve.

Any viewer that can accept the story changes to Iron Man 3 will appreciate the eventual reward in the movie’s final climactic battle scene between Tony, Rhodey, and Killian. There are those that say this final showdown is the movie’s only real good part. But as already noted there is much more to be taken away from the movie. Seeing all the armor from Tony’s “Hall of Armor” lets audiences know that regardless of whether RDJ returns for Iron Man 4 or Avengers 2, odds are audiences will still see Iron Man return with much more armor and action in future installments. After all, certain parties noted that the most recent take on The Incredible Hulk would be the last one for a while. But obviously that’s now been proven false as the not so Jolly Green Giant is apparently back on the table again for Marvel’s next phase. So even if RDJ is done (as he seemed to note even within the context of the movie), it would be no surprise if Shellhead returns with someone else donning the Iron Man suit….or suits?

As one can tell by now, there is plenty for which Iron Man 3 should be applauded. For all of its positives, there are some negatives. The first of those negatives is the movie’s pacing. Its run time is roughly two hours and fifteen minutes. But it feels like it is much longer. Unlike its competitor, Star Trek Into Darkness, Iron Man 3 felt like (just as with DC’s The Dark Knight Rises), Black and Pearce were trying way too hard to cram everything they could into this one last installment so as to close the trilogy. What’s more, incorporating multiple villains, as so many of the comic based movies have done in recent years, only added to the movie’s length. It would have been much easier to simply stick with Killian as the main villain. After all, audiences are hand delivered early on the fact that Killian would be the main villain. The extra storyline may lead some viewers to find themselves checking their watches every now and then, wondering when the two hour plus movie will finally end. And because of this, it will ultimately leave some viewers realizing that this key issue has and will forever keep Iron Man 3 from being the movie that it was hyped up to be. Rather, it will keep Iron Man 3 little more than another transition point to Marvel’s next property, just like its comic books.